Words
by Clair de Lune - CdL
Summary: Someone talks in their sleep... (Post-series, alternate canon). Part of the Roses and Cabbages series.


**Title: Words**  
 **Characters:** Michael/Sara, Lincoln  
 **Summary/prompt by Aqua_Owl:** Someone talks in their sleep... (Post-series, alternate canon.)  
 **A/N:** Part of the Roses and Cabbages 'verse (please see my profile)

* * *

It's words of trust and intimacy and abandon; words of love and sometimes lust that would make her blush in broad daylight. In the cocoon of their bedroom at night, they light up pleasant warmth in her chest, her stomach, her loins.

"He does that," Lincoln acknowledged once at the end of the dinner they'd just shared, shaking his head in understanding and compassion. He was smirking but the affection in his tone was obvious. "Talking in his sleep. You don't know what sharing a room with him means until he starts solving equations while you're trying to sleep."

"There aren't that many equations nowadays." Sara spoke cheerfully and too fast, before she could process what would necessarily follow; mouth working faster than brain.

"No? What does he talk about?"

She was almost positive there was no malice or innuendo in Lincoln's question, only honest curiosity.

She did not blush – Michael stared at the contents of his plate as if it was particularly fascinating, though – and bit her tongue.

"Stuff," she said with a vague and sweeping gesture of her arm. "Nothing special."

"So his nightly talk hasn't become more interesting with the years?"

"Nope."

"I feel for you."

She nodded in earnest and squeezed Michael's hand on the table. No matter how much she loved her brother-in-law there were things she was not willing to share with him. Michael still solved equations in his sleep, that being said; it just wasn't his main focus anymore.

It was odd at first; embarrassing. Amidst the mumble-jumble of syllables and numbers – and the occasional Greek letter – she could make out actual words and sentences. They meant something and that was the issue: she felt like a voyeur, prying into a kind of intimacy she had no business with.

(Okay. No. At first, it had been hilarious. Most guarded guy ever talking in his sleep? Nice quirk of fate. She watched and listened in amusement and fascination as his lashes fluttered and his lips let out drawled-out words. She smiled fondly. She stroked his cheek and ran her finger down his jaw. And when she realized how intimate the babbling was, she kissed his mouth to shut him up, for his own good, for his own privacy.)

"It's not prying. I have nothing to hide from you," Michael told her after he was done apologizing for his untimely chitchat.

"Everybody has something they want to hide or not share. That's okay. That's what secret gardens are for."

"You hide things from me?" he asked with a sly smile. "Like what?"

She tilted her head to the side and granted him a pointed look – secret gardens were supposed to be, you know, _secret_. She thought he would cajole her, blue-eye her or maybe resort to less than fair enticements to get a response. He didn't. Instead, he elbowed her in the ribs and quipped, "Come on, Tancredi, spit it out. I certainly have been doing it for months. Reciprocate."

She wrapped-unwrapped the fabric of her dress around her index finger a few times, pondering whether she should answer, and then considering her options.

When she talked again, it was in a breathy voice, the thick arousal in it not entirely faked. "I like that thing you did with your tongue last night." Her legs shifted of their own volition at the memory.

"That's hardly something you hid at all," he replied, lips quirked with self-satisfaction.

She squinted at him. He was a smug, full of himself, conceited, arrogant – although damn cute – bastard.

With a tongue that did amazing things to her, and words that had felt like honey and fire against her flesh the night before, and before, and...

"Do it again tonight and I might consider telling more," she bargained.

Maybe _bargain_ was a stretch. It wasn't as if he put up any resistance or condition.

But she had a deal, and that was all that mattered.

o-o-o

 _After the dinner, as Michael was hooking up whatever needed to be hooked up in the living room to show them an underwater vid he'd made that day, Lincoln had cleared the table with her. While piling up the plates in the sink, he'd leaned down and grumbled into her ear, "The fucking talking in his sleep thing? It only happens with the people he trusts the most. Which means you and me."_

 _She had looked up and smiled at Lincoln. She'd had a hunch about that._

Trust, and intimacy, and abandon.

END


End file.
